The MusicNerd Q&A With July Talk

If you’ve visited my site over the past couple of days, you’ll realize that it has been a quiet week thus far in terms of getting some new posts up. I want to say that I appreciate every last one of you that stops by to see what I’m writing about whether you arrive here by accident or whether you deliberately find your way here. Between a full-time job and my two awesome kids, there just ain’t enough time to get new posts up all the time.

But I digress…

Every month, I write a column for The Times & Transcript here in Moncton where I talk about shows coming up in the city over the next month. When I put my monthly column together a couple of weeks ago, I had sent out a tardy interview request to Toronto band July Talk who I really dig. Anyway, the press deadline came and I wasn’t able to squeeze them in (not their fault) so to (hopefully) help promote their show this coming Friday (April 12) at Plan B here in Moncton, I’d like to post the Q&A that I did with Peter Dreimanis from the band. And for the love of God, you’re not going to be able to see these guys in a small club like Plan B again so get your asses out to see them while you can.

This will be perhaps the first time ever that I will have two Q&A’s posted in the same week. It’s like Haley’s Comet or some shit like that. Rare! Exciting!

The dynamics of the band, the whole sweet and sour thing with the vocals (no offense intended) is awesome. It’s not really all that common these days either. Where did the idea come from to have both you and Leah sing?

The idea for July Talk was always for each song to play out as a conversation. We wanted to create songs and performances that elaborated on our differences. As we developed our set, it became very clear that the strongest material came when we were pitted against each other on stage, pushing the traditional duet to become more confrontational. We’ve always done it very organically and discussed our dynamic as little as possible. This way, every show is different and audiences never really know what they’re going to get.

It seems as though there is quite an intense connection between you and Leah. It’s even evident in listening to the songs on the record. How long after you met did you get to making the record?

We were lucky enough to start developing our record only a few months after the band’s first show. We were able to document the process of July Talk being born. We realize how rare this is, and we think it comes across with a certain urgency on the recordings. The tough part of recording was trying to create an intimacy between our voices like that of our live show. In some ways it can be more difficult when recording separate takes to avoid that separation. In other ways it was really fun to be able to play with the mix and use the opportunity to put Leah’s whisper over a barrage of chaotic guitar tracks. It seems we protect the connection and honesty between us above all else and that was definitely the first priority when creating the record.